Posts Tagged ‘ISIS’

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Obama is now waiting to be rescued by Iran

June 16, 2014

A week ago only Middle East experts knew much about ISIS. And in less than a week the possible break up of Iraq has becomes more than just a distant reality and is now a “work in progress”. Republicans are blaming Obama for the failure of reaching an agreement with al Maliki and the premature withdrawal of troop. Democrats blame Bush Jr. and Cheney and the neo-cons for duping the US and the world in justifying the 2003 invasion. And they are – of course – both right. The initial invasion “broke”Iraq but Obama is the one who has refused to fix it or even to provide the glue with which to fix it.

Over the weekend the mayhem continued in Iraq as the blood-letting by ISIS plunges to new depths.

Twenty three years after the First Gulf war, George Bush Sr. has returned – reincarnated as an aircraft carrier. In an unusual burst of activity President Obama sent the US navy to the Gulf as NBC reports – “The USS George H.W. Bush — accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun — was ordered to the Persian Gulf Saturday to protect American lives and interests in the region.” The ships arrived on Sunday. The size of the fleet makes one suspect the preparation of an evacuation of Baghdad (shades of Saigon!) rather than any significant military opposition to ISIS. Some staff are already being evacuated from the US Embassy.

President Obama continues to contemplate his dwindling options. Tony Blair is still living in his own deluded fantasies. Blair jets around as a Middle East Peace envoy and is now calling for more bombings and more bloodshed to try and defend his own blood-drenched legacy. But Obama may get help from an unlikely source:

Al Jazeera: Iran’s president held out the prospect of working with the U.S. in a bid to stabilize strife-torn Iraq on Saturday, but denied reports that troops had already been sent across the border to bolster its failing neighbor’s counter-insurgency efforts.

Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who is presiding over a nascent thaw in Iran’s relations with the West, said if Washington was willing to confront “terrorist groups in Iraq and elsewhere,” then Tehran would contemplate cooperating with its traditional foe over Iraq.

Echoing comments made by President Barack Obama on Friday, Rouhani added that Tehran was unlikely to send forces to Iraq but stood ready to provide help within the framework of international law. Baghdad has not as yet requested such assistance, he added.

The BBC reports that the US and Iran may hold talks about possible cooperation later this week. And this gives Obama the perfect excuse to continue with his “do-nothing” policy as he waits to be rescued by Iran.

BBC: Washington is considering direct talks with Iran on the security situation in Iraq, a US official has told the BBC. The move comes as US President Barack Obama weighs up options on action to take in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the US condemned as “horrifying” photos posted online by Sunni militants that appear to show fighters massacring Iraqi soldiers. In the scenes, the soldiers are shown being led away and lying in trenches before and after their “execution”.

But this mending of fences between the US and Iran will not go down very well in Israel. Netanyahu will now be under pressure from his hawks to carry out pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities before the rapprochement goes too far.

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Posted in Iran, Iraq, Middle East, US | 1 Comment »

More spying, less intelligence?

June 13, 2014

The level of blanket spying by the US agencies (aided and abetted by so-called intelligence agencies of friendly countries), apparently on anyone and everything, as revealed by Edward Snowden, was amazing but not particularly shocking. It is not just enemies abroad who have been monitored. Even US citizens and organisations  have been subject to eavesdropping, hacking, entrapment and plain theft. The NSA has even targeted the conversations of heads of friendly countries in their insatiable quest for information. The volume of information gathered and still being collected is truly staggering. All kinds of information is collected across every conceivable field. It covers law enforcement interests, foreign policy and industrial espionage. It ranges from financial matters related to tax evasion or money laundering, to the plans of terrorist groups, to the criminal activities of international gangs to industrial espionage of benefit to US corporations.

Of course converting information into intelligence takes much analysis which requires the application of mind. Then converting intelligence into actions requires the will and the ability to act upon the intelligence. In spite of the huge amount of information that has been gathered, I have a clear perception that both the conversion of raw information into intelligence and the translation of intelligence into actions have been conspicuous by their absence.

The events in Iraq over the last week are just one of a long line of instances where either the intelligence services have been caught napping or there is an extraordinary sequence of political failures to act upon available intelligence. Probably it is a combination of both.

By the nature of spying, cases of successful intelligence analysis may never be known. But the number of apparent failures gives no confidence that the extensive spying is leading to any better intelligence. The massive gathering of information has certainly not managed to anticipate or prevent a very large number of unpleasant happenings – both domestically in the US and abroad.

  • 74 school shootings in the US since the start of 2013
  • bank scandals in the last 10 years where raw information was around but was not properly analysed
  • the Boston marathon bombing
  • the Arab Spring and especially the revolution in Egypt and the return of the military more recently
  • the premeditated attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi
  • the consequence of supporting the rebels in Syria and the rise of the jihadists (including ISIS),
  • the return of the Taliban in Afghanstan
  • the rise of ISIS in Iraq and the collapse of the regular, US-trained, Iraqi troops

Of course some of the failures to act may well have been due to a lack of political action rather than a failure of intelligence. Barack Obama is so risk-averse that he generally overthinks every issue and then always chooses the “do nothing” option. In Iraq now, all that was ever supposedly gained during the war there is threatened and crumbling. Even so, in the face of this “urgent emergency” (is there any other kind?) he stated cautiously yesterday that all options were still on the table and that he is considering every option. But he may not actually order anything beyond a few drone strikes in support of  Nouri al-Maliki. And once again – as in the case of Syria – he may find that the US has helped create a monster for the future. And he may find himself reluctantly allied with Iran.

NYTimes:

The possibility of coming to Iraq’s rescue raises a host of thorny questions for Mr. Obama, who has steadfastly resisted being drawn into sectarian strife in Iraq or its neighbor, Syria. Republican lawmakers accused him of being caught flat-footed by the crisis and of hastening this outcome by not leaving an adequate American force behind after 2011.

Reports that Iran has sent its paramilitary Quds Force to help the struggling Iraqi Army battle the militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, raised the awkward possibility that the United States could find itself allied with Iran in shoring up an unpopular Shiite government in Baghdad. The White House said it was aware of the reports, but did not confirm them.

Mr. Obama insisted he had been monitoring the threat from Sunni militant groups for several months. The United States, he said, had supplied Iraq with military equipment and intelligence. 

The Washington Post writes that “despite years of training and billions of dollars in U.S. time and equipment, Iraq’s military is still a “checkpoint Army,” more interested in manning roadblocks than developing intelligence and engaging in counterinsurgency missions”.

Saddam Hussain was no doubt one of the “bad guys”. But under his regime no mad jihadist leader or an ISIS army would have been allowed to establish itself, grow and then expand as Nouri al-Maliki’s government with US military support has permitted.

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Posted in Behaviour, Intelligence, Iraq, Politics, US | Comments Off on More spying, less intelligence?

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